At the crossroads of the party and the protest, the militant carnival has established itself as a form mixing festive tradition and subversive intentions. Mobilization and transgression tool, carnival blurs the border between revolt and staging.
How to make the story of a militant form ? Fruit of a research-creation doctorate This book by Sacha Todorov offers behind the appearances of immediate history, an original survey on the form of “ militant carnival ». Among the tools of social movements in full renewal in the 1980s, it first met in England, before winning the rest of the world, and especially France in the late 1990s.
On the basis of militant documentation and studies devoted to each other, the events and movements identified, the subject reaches, by focusing on two successive terrains, to highlight both the continuity of a protest tactic and the relatives connecting several movements between them (beyond the only proximity of claims). By leaning on the speeches of militant actors on their “ carnivals “, The author assumes an approach” eldic (P. 25) Finally, more attached to the descriptions made by the organizers, and to the meanings that they attribute to these acts, than to the performance themselves. These are sometimes difficult to grasp, by the reader at least, being mentioned only from the testimonies alone, and in the absence of any iconography.
The subversive potential of carnival
Speaking on several occasions the revolutionary potential of the carnival, Sacha Todorov highlights certain filiations, including these contemporary forms of protest to the developments of the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtine, to his Dostoevski poeticsand more to The work of François Rabelais and popular culture in the Middle Ages and under the Renaissance. Bakhtine indeed develops in these writings the notion of “ carnival », As a knot of a class opposition between popular culture and official culture. For him, the very strength of the culture of the masses makes it fit, by laughter and by the aesthetics of the grotesque, to subvert and overthrow social and political order. However, the subject underlines from the introduction that “ The boom (…) of carnival in militant circles owes everything to Bakhtine », The speeches of the organizers of militant carnivals almost systematically referring to it.
The militant use of carnival does not appear to be without efficiency, from its first appearances in London under the impetus of the campaign Stop the City In 1983, against the growing weight of economic and financial circles, then with the movement Reclaim the Streetsguided by an ideal for sharing public space and, in particular, by the fight against the place of the car. Trained in 1991, Reclaim the Streets multiplies the events and street festivals (street parties) Throughout the decade.
Over the years, the protest potential of the carnival appears accomplished, as soon as the figure of the undercom fell Marcos, an instigator of the neo-zapatist uprising of the Chiapas, in Mexico, since 1996. Although false, as Sacha Todorov underlines (p. 69-70), a citation widely disseminated under his name thus claims the identification of the revolutionary process:
The revolution is no longer imagined according to the patterns of socialist realism, that is to say men and women who walk stoically behind a red flag floating in the wind, towards a bright future. Rather, it has become a kind of carnival.
The militant carnival is also essential, in a more concrete and less equivocal way, by modes of action such as the use of masks (p. 79-80). While protecting individuals from the means of video surveillance, in fact, the mask coated by thousands of demonstrators also acts as a means of recognition, and as the revealer of mobilization: “ Our masks are not there to hide our identity, but to reveal it “Is it thus printed on the very back of distributed masks,” This mask brings us together, allows us to act together, (…) by putting our masks, we reveal our unity ».
Carnival as a valve ?
To this subversive force of the carnival, however, opposes another vision, another interpretation, more critical, designated by Sacha Todorov as “ valve controversy ». From the introduction indeed, this duality of the carnival is recalled: the practice “ festive Is the revolt the support of a real questioning of the established order, or does it constitute only an authorized outlet and therefore, basically, a pure staging participating in rebuilding the political and social frameworks against which it is supposed to rise ? “” Impossible to decide in the absolute “(P. 25), this debate structures the opposition between two interpretations of the militant carnival, as an expression” reactionary ” Or “ revolutionary “, Contributing to the order on one side, contesting it on the other. It is that these two dimensions actually coexist originally in carnivalsque expression, as Michel Agier could note by noting that the carnival “ can pass, almost insensibly, from a cathartic party to a seditious party “And therefore that the passenger outlet can also turn into” political revolt ».
The fundamental ambiguity of carnival does not necessarily worry the militant movements, which seem to anticipate this criticism and count on their own determination. Beyond this controversy, the harmless appearance of the carnival form could even be returned as an asset, by promoting mobilization in a festive mode, while defusing the risks of repression. However, some carnival events seem to have missed their goal by seeing their political dimension overshadowed, inaudible, some noting that the demonstration has “ Definitely fired on the side of the party (P. 125). It is thus to the philosopher SLOVENE SLAVOJ ž; Occupy Wall Street : “ Carnavals are not expensive. What matters is the next day, when we have to go back to our normal lives. Will there have been changes at that time ? (P. 156).
A global distribution
Having identified the United Kingdom as a place of birth of militant carnivals and street partiesSacha Todorov shows the way in which these protest forms spread at the end of the 1990s, under the effect of increasingly coordinated movements on a global scale and around two central causes: altergloning and the environment. Thus is organized on May 16, 1998 a real “ World Street Festival », Under the impetus of the group Reclaim the Streetswith variations in around thirty metropolises in Europe, the Americas and Australia. Then, on June 18, 1999, the Carnival Against Capitalorganized once again on several continents to protest against the G8 summit in Cologne.
In both cases, however, London remains a center and a model from which initiatives shine. The first demonstration to clearly take over the carnival mode outside the United Kingdom is therefore that organized in Seattle, on November 30, 1999, on the occasion of the summit of theOmcand remained in memories for the violence of his repression under the nickname “ Battle of Seattle ». But behind this “ Founding act of alterglobalism (P. 89) and the images of confrontation that we usually retain, carnivalsque inspiration appears clearly in the speeches of the organizers – as well as for several other emblematic events of the alter -globalization current in the 2000s alone.
French import of militant carnival
France appears as a field of carnival demonstrations, which is first very sporadic, perhaps because of a preference noted by the author for forms being part of a longer temporality: camps of action and others “ alternative villages (P. 126-128). It is actually later and as part of a much more original and autonomous protest wave, with the affirmation of Zad From Notre-Dame-des-Landes in 2008, which the reference to carnival multiplies in France, essentially from 2013 in the events, both on the spot, and in several cities of France in support of the Zad (Nantes, Toulouse, Rennes, etc.).
The organization of carnivals in militant contexts then multiplied from 2016, against the “ Labor law », Against the state of emergency, and as part of the Night Standing movement. The author notes on this occasion different practices, notably that, observed on several occasions, of the symbolic execution of effigies like political leaders or representatives of employers (decapitated, devoured, burned, etc.). This theatrical gesture, targeted by several complaints and judicial investigations, is however well inscribed in the line of proper transgressions at the carnival moment (p. 148-149).
Source of inspiration and cultural reference, the carnival remains, however, in France too, an object of suspicion, especially for the yellow vests which appeared at the end of 2018. Among them, in fact, fears are expressed because of a festive atmosphere which would be unsuitable for the expression of the “ anger “, Some activists fearing the” cheesy “Demonstrations compared to” farandoles “, At “ Enchanted merry -go -round “Or” fair (P. 157-159).
Transform capital into carnival ?
Once again, however, this ambiguity specific to the carnival also bases militant efficiency. Basically, the carnivalsque inspiration is that of the overthrow, that the protest movements by appropriating it could return against an order which, more and more, is essential by the mode of the exception and the emergency devices. So it would be “ Turn over the pejorative dimension of the carnival (grotesque, vicious, unfair) against capitalism “And, in this,” to reverse the standard/exception ». Behind the success of the carnival as a militant form would therefore be the proclamation of another certainty: “ It is the current standard that is abnormal “, And therefore,” overthrowing it amounts to putting things in the place (P. 86-87).
In this the militant carnival, faithful to the original biblical inspiration of the carnival, orPraise of madness of Erasmus, could it not be better appropriate in a world “ Sweet upside down », In the words of the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015), a tutelary figure of anti-capitalism, quoted by the author ? Then only one relevant, deeply carnival question would remain: “ If the world is as it is now, feeling upside down, should we not overthrow it, so that it falls on its feet ? »»